Revision as of 18:23, 17 October 2013

Contents

Channel Icon Download System

As of 0.21, MythTV includes a channel icon download system in mythtv-setup which will attempt to automatically download icons for channels in your database from services.mythtv.org. If it cannot find an icon it will present you with a list of options, an the ability to define your own search parameters.

To configure icon downloading in mythtv-setup:

run "mythtv-setup"

select "Channel Editor"

click on "Icon Download"

select either "Download all icons.." or "Rescan for missing icons.."

Universal Location

Starting with version 0.27, a single location for channel icons can be
created on the master backend. The only symlink required is for mythweb.
Remove it's .../data/tv_icons directory and link it to the chosen
single directory. Make sure that the directory has read/write permissions for user mythtv
and choose the same group that is used by mythweb, e.g. www-data. Make the
new single location directory's mode 775.

Symlinks added for prior versions (or old channels/ChannelIcons directories and
their contents) can be removed. Obviously after copying icons to a new
directory as required.

The Services API (e.g. <backend>:6544/Guide/GetChannelIcon?ChanId=1021) endpoint works with this
feature as of [d34c696]cgitgithub.

Pre 0.27 Instructions

By default the icon will be downloaded to the /home/<user>/.mythtv/channels directory. This is not very friendly when you have multiple frontends and wish them all to share the icons. One method to get around this is to use a symlink for this directory that directs to a network located directory that all your frontends have access to, say /var/mythtv/channels for example.

Before downloading the icons, do the following, or similar as per your distribution:

Channel Icon Sources

One of the best sources of channel icons is http://www.lyngsat-logo.com/ . There, you can browse the available icons and choose those appropriate for your system. However, doing so can be a lot of work (requiring many page hits and a lot of time). Once downloaded you should put the resulting JPEG files into .mythtv/channels/ for the user running the front-end. To add them to a channel you will need to run mythtv-setup and go to the channel editor and specify the icon file name for each channel.

Another source of channel icons is http://www.iconharmony.com/ which is targeted for icons for the harmony remote. Some of the available icons are more stylized than the official icon (the person running the site is a graphic artist). As with the previous source, finding an appropriate icon can be a lot of work.